The operation of mass media non-volatile memory (“NVM”) cards is well known. Various NVM mass storage devices able to handle large data files such as smart media cards, MultiMediaCards, memory sticks, and other like NVM mass storage devices and cards have been gaining market acceptance over the past several years. Hereinbelow, the term MultiMediaCard (“MMC”), or the like, refers to any NVM mass storage device able to handle large data files regardless of the protocol used. To date, the above NVM cards have been used for consumer applications such as digital cameras and portable music devices. Due to the absence of an agreed upon security standard for the above mentioned NVM card standards, none have been approved by any industry (e.g. banking, telecom, etc.) for the storage of private data such as bank details or telephone account information.
A category of NVM cards known as “smart-cards,” having generally smaller capacity than the above mentioned mass storage devices, which work with secured application such as “smart card applications,” have been known and adopted for commercial use by several industries including banking and telecommunications. Hereinbelow, the term “smart-card applications” refers to all secured applications known which relate or conform to the interoperability standard defined by the International Standards Organization (ISO) as the ISO 7816 standard for integrated circuit cards with contacts, or with any other secure standard. The specifications of the ISO 7816 standard, and any other standards which may relate thereto, focus on interoperability of secured applications over the physical, electrical, and data-link protocol levels.
There is a broad base of smart-card applications already on the market, and the need for secured applications in general is growing. Banks and credit institutions, for example, have defined an industry-specific smart card specification. This specification adopted the ISO 7816 standards and defined some additional data types and encoding rules for use by the financial services industry. This industry standard is called the EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa) standard. The ISO 7816 standard has also been adopted by the telecommunication industry, for use with the global system for mobile communications (GSM), to enable identification and authentication of mobile telephone users.
Due to the ISO 7816 standards, as well as the specifications that have adopted it, smart card applications and other ISO 7816 compliant applications currently operate only on an ISO 7816 communication protocol, for the most part using I/O, clock (CLK), and reset (RST) lines to store and retrieve data from a smart-card chip which us usually integrated within a smart-card controller of a protocol unit.